Any confirmation that we can adopt our kids with Zero?

[EJ107]

I think that we have to excuse them for not including it in Fates. It's the first time they have included same-sex marriage options, and there are only two options so It's simply not worth creating new child characters solely for those marriages.

If they continue to have both same sex marriages and child characters in the future I think the best option would be to expand the number of possible same-sex pairings (including allowing same sex pairings outside of the Avatar) and have a single always adopted child character who can be the child of any of those couples.

[Sias]

Maybe for Zero's kid but uh, what are the odds of you finding a child that can turn into a dragon to adopt? At least, I assume that ability gets passed down to the Avatar's kids.

As I said, it's more unlikely for the shapeshifting children to be adopted, but honestly...

What are the odds of suddenly finding a small dragon girl (Nowi) while running through an enemy country's desert and fending off some weird religious fanatics in the first place?

And even then, there'd still be surrogate mothers if you wanted blood-relation.

Time travel, different dimensions and reincarnation all still seem more realistic than a homosexual pairing having the child that was supposed to be their biological child in a heterosexual pairing.

Actually saying that the child was a surrogate child in supports would work, or they could just have a different child prepared for the homosexual pairings as I said before.

I... don't really agree with you that time/dimension-jumping is more realistic than getting your biological child in a gay relationship.

As capmalachi pointed out, the kids stay the same in every other relationship, so why not here as well? Just because they aren't blood-related?

I think that is kind of grasping at straws there...

That's a problem that can easily be fixed.

They can just make the two children similar to each other so that there wouldn't be two completely different characters for people to pick from.

They could have the same class, similar personalities with each child having one of their own unique traits added on, similar designs with different coloring and similar hair with either a different hair style or hair color. That way the only possible things people could complain about is liking the color scheme of one child option more than the other, which seems pretty miniscule of a problem.

But if you're going to have two children that are super similar anyways (besides minor differences), why don't you just take one of them and use it for both cases?

It literally makes no logical sense whatsoever to say that gays should be adopt their own biological children. It is accepted by logicians that a child necessarily has the same parents in every possible world:

It's a game with magic, but that doesn't make the game illogical. Magic is not a violation of the laws of logic. It would literally be a violation of the laws of logic for, say, Camilla to have been born to different parents. You don't see violations of the laws of logic in Fire Emblem Fates, do you? Do you see square circles and other kinds of logical contradictions in FE14? No.

Um, but if you look at how the whole child business has worked so far, you'll notice one thing:

Chrom/Sumia gives you Lucina. So does Chrom/MU. And Chrom/Maribelle. And every other pairing with Chrom that there is.

While of course you can argue now that Sumia!Lucy isn't 100% identical with Maribelle!Lucy, and therefore Sumia!Lucy isn't exactly the same child as Maribelle!Lucy (I totally agree with you here), this isn't the point.

Yes, both are different - they have other classes, caps, growths, another family constellation, ... - but in fact everything besides this, their character, personality and even the support with the respective mother stay identical.

So yeah, while in theory both Lucinas should be significantly different and not be the same child character, they simply are. And it's an entirely similar business with every other offspring in the game.

The children in the different pairings are never exactly equal, but still are like 95% identical.

And sorry, but there you have your violation of logic in Fire Emblem, because never ever would someone have pretty much the same child with 20 different partners.

So it could be perfectly possible for a gay pairing to just adopt their respective biological kids, because if you throw around children illogically all the time, why not here as well?

Or, if you want to avoid this option: Add surrogate mothers, making things even more simple. If someone can have the same child with a dozen of mothers in the game, why not with a surrogate one to bring it into the relationship afterwards?

Edited July 3, 2015 by Sias

[capmalachi]

If it were me, I'd do it like this. Male!Kamui marries Zero, they go visit Nyx, she does some magic voodoo shit and bam! Baby Eponne, biologically related to both of her male parents. Then they go again and get Kanna as well. This is just as realistic as pretty much anything else in this game as far as I'm concerned. Nothing about the child system makes perfect sense anyway.

Edited July 3, 2015 by capmalachi

[Sias]

If it were me, I'd do it like this. Male!Kamui marries Zero, they go visit Nyx, she does some magic voodoo shit and bam! Baby Eponne, biologically related to both of her male parents. Then they go again and get Kanna as well. This is just as realistic as pretty much anything else in this game as far as I'm concerned. Nothing about the child system makes perfect sense anyway.

And this is what I was saying before, pretty much.

The whole freaking child system is not logical, so why should it need to be for homosexuals?

[LorisaGoldfish]

I find it kind of ridiculous that male Kamui/Zero doesn't produce Eponine, the girl obsessed with boy/boy romance. Seems pretty ironic to me.

The whole freaking child system is not logical, so why should it need to be for homosexuals?

^This

[Chiki]

Um, but if you look at how the whole child business has worked so far, you'll notice one thing:

Chrom/Sumia gives you Lucina. So does Chrom/MU. And Chrom/Maribelle. And every other pairing with Chrom that there is.

While of course you can argue now that Sumia!Lucy isn't 100% identical with Maribelle!Lucy, and therefore Sumia!Lucy isn't exactly the same child as Maribelle!Lucy (I totally agree with you here), this isn't the point.

Yes, both are different - they have other classes, caps, growths, another family constellation, ... - but in fact everything besides this, their character, personality and even the support with the respective mother stay identical.

So yeah, while in theory both Lucinas should be significantly different and not be the same child character, they simply are. And it's an entirely similar business with every other offspring in the game.

The children in the different pairings are never exactly equal, but still are like 95% identical.

And sorry, but there you have your violation of logic in Fire Emblem, because never ever would someone have pretty much the same child with 20 different partners.

So it could be perfectly possible for a gay pairing to just adopt their respective biological kids, because if you throw around children illogically all the time, why not here as well?

Or, if you want to avoid this option: Add surrogate mothers, making things even more simple. If someone can have the same child with a dozen of mothers in the game, why not with a surrogate one to bring it into the relationship afterwards?

It is the point. The point is that they're not the same person.

If they're not the same person, the reasoning applies here. They can't adopt their own biological children because they're not the same person anymore: they'd merely be adopting a lookalike of their child, nothing more.

[Sias]

It is the point. The point is that they're not the same person.

If they're not the same person, the reasoning applies here. They can't adopt their own biological children because they're not the same person anymore: they'd merely be adopting a lookalike of their child, nothing more.

But they don't need to be exactly the same person.

It's what I said before: Sumia!Lucy isn't Maribelle!Lucy isn't Olivia!Lucy and so on.

But even though they have their differences, they still all are Lucina, and they still have tons of similarities in about everything what defines them.

If you think about it like that, there never is a real "Lucina". And there is never going to be one in any game being exactly the same person that she is.

We only have different variations of this one archetype of character, and while they all have different circumstances, they are Lucinas nevertheless.

Basically, you could say that all of them are only lookalikes of that one role model, but nobody does, so why do you want to apply that argumentation to adopted children here?

Noone would want an adopted Eponine to be a biological child (you still could use surrogate mothers instead, of course), and noone wants her to be completely the same person that such a child would be, but people want a kid for Zero who is still an "Eponine" regardless of that.

If you argue like you currently do, you could say that every possible child of his is just a lookalike of the one and true Eponine, simply because she is never going to exist at any point. With every different mother, we get a different Eponine, and even for heterosexual pairings they wouldn't all be the exact same.

So if that is perfectly acceptable for those pairings, why shouldn't it be for an adopted child as well? We would just get another variation of Eponine on top of the ones that are already existing.

When we can have similar versions of that one model character for every single of Zero's heterosexual relationships, why can't we have this for his homosexual pairing as well?

[CyberNinja]

Technically speaking... you could consider Zero's personal skill adoption.

[ckc22]

There are so many things wrong with this thread that I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[Chiki]

But they don't need to be exactly the same person.

It's what I said before: Sumia!Lucy isn't Maribelle!Lucy isn't Olivia!Lucy and so on.

But even though they have their differences, they still all are Lucina, and they still have tons of similarities in about everything what defines them.

If you think about it like that, there never is a real "Lucina". And there is never going to be one in any game being exactly the same person that she is.

We only have different variations of this one archetype of character, and while they all have different circumstances, they are Lucinas nevertheless.

Basically, you could say that all of them are only lookalikes of that one role model, but nobody does, so why do you want to apply that argumentation to adopted children here?

Noone would want an adopted Eponine to be a biological child (you still could use surrogate mothers instead, of course), and noone wants her to be completely the same person that such a child would be, but people want a kid for Zero who is still an "Eponine" regardless of that.

If you argue like you currently do, you could say that every possible child of his is just a lookalike of the one and true Eponine, simply because she is never going to exist at any point. With every different mother, we get a different Eponine, and even for heterosexual pairings they wouldn't all be the exact same.

So if that is perfectly acceptable for those pairings, why shouldn't it be for an adopted child as well? We would just get another variation of Eponine on top of the ones that are already existing.

When we can have similar versions of that one model character for every single of Zero's heterosexual relationships, why can't we have this for his homosexual pairing as well?

And what would be the growths and the skill set of this kid?

[Sunsurge]

But honestly, if you just throw in a line about surrogacy, this ALL goes away, and there's no need to think this hard about it.

Adoption is illogical—fine—but come on. Surrogacy is completely viable, and throws back in biology (because you know, that's SO important when there are dragons, reincarnation and a weird time flow). I still think going to Nyx was my FAVORITE idea. XD But honestly, there are ways to get around it, that don't require THAT much thought.

[Sias]

And what would be the growths and the skill set of this kid?

Growths in case of Kamui/Zero: (Father#1’s growth rates + Father#2’s growth rates + Child’s absolute growth rates) / 3 + class growth rates

Skillset would be similar with: Classes passed on by Father#1 + Classes passed on by Father#2 + Possible bonus classes the child might have

But honestly, if you just throw in a line about surrogacy, this ALL goes away, and there's no need to think this hard about it.

Adoption is illogical—fine—but come on. Surrogacy is completely viable, and throws back in biology (because you know, that's SO important when there are dragons, reincarnation and a weird time flow). I still think going to Nyx was my FAVORITE idea. XD But honestly, there are ways to get around it, that don't require THAT much thought.

Yeah, we have plenty of options that could be used even if we avoid adoption:

Using Nyx' forbidden black magic, putting magical powders in your Zero's drink, having Camilla happily volunteer as surrogate mother for Kamui's child...

[Fogs]

How about this guys.

Zero/Shara and Kamui marry.

They adopt a/two kid(s). Who look exactly like Kanna (and Eponine), have the same personality, and the same names, but aren't the Kanna (or Eponine) any of the other partners could have given birth to.

Just like Camilla's children wouldn't be the same as Nyx's, but nearly identical. Considering that a single parent change should have a huge impact on a kid's biology, but really doesn't, I don't see how adopting a child that looks exactly like other 20 kids you could have that are nearly identical to each other is any more illogical than what we already have.

There! Problem solved.

In this case, their children get their growths and bases and classes and whatever based on their fathers/mothers.

And Kanna just takes the role of "random manakete kid you found lying around and joins you", just like Nowi, Myrrh and Fa before him/her.

(and, y'know, if you think that's so terribly illogical you can just not marry them. or not do the paralogues if you do marry them. Just saying,)

Edited July 3, 2015 by Fogs

[NobodyInWonderland]

I'd like to mention that story-wise, if it were possible to adopt Eponine when in a gay pairing, there would be no indication whatsoever that she's a biological parallel apart from player knowledge of what would happen if Zero married a female and what sort of child you'd get. You would have effectively created an "alternate dimension" where she wasn't Zero's biological child, but was still fated to end up as his. It's not a question of what sort of magic would result in a child from completely different parents being the same as a prospective biological child; it's they adopted a kid. End of story. In an alternate dimension, perhaps if Kamui were female, she might have been exactly the same except their biological daughter; but in this save file she'd just be some kid that they adopted. I've never met anybody in the real world, with biological kids or with adopted ones, who bothered to try to figure out how different their kids in a parallel dimension would be from their current ones, and bringing genetics into the picture is more realism than the dev team is likely to bother with. Of course, having her adopted in every version would be the easiest way to fix this, as well as make supports more generic, so it's an option.

And as far as finding Kanna lying around, I'm not sure I'd want to go into reasons why "random manakete nobody knew about previously" wouldn't make sense in a world where the main royalty of two opposing kingdoms are implied to have dragon blood (since all of them can use dragon's vein). The short version: if there was a real possibility that someone with dragon's blood was either related to your own royal family or the enemy's, would people really just lose track of them randomly? However, this can easily be solved by making her a very distant relative of Kamui's from an obscure bloodline of some sort - which even solves the 'then they're not a blood relation' thing, since bloodlines seem to be harped on frequently enough. Actually, the same technique would work with Eponine if blood relation was important: make her his niece from a sister or brother never seen on screen. That would explain any similarities to the parent character, as well as why characters extremely busy with a war would bother to adopt kids in the middle of it.

I have more of a problem with "magically made kids" because, whether magic itself is logical or not, in most well-written fictional universes it has to abide by rules. In the Fire Emblem universe, plenty of things have been made with magic, but, while I might be wrong because I haven't played all the games, I haven't seen or heard mentioned anything about a fully sentient being made with magic. The most I've seen are things like the Risen or various malignant monsters rumbling about, or... well... mostly rather nasty things that aren't all that friendly. Has anything before or since implied that anyone had capabilities to magically create human life? Or even a hex of that magnitude that was anywhere near permanent? For heaven's sake, Henry in Awakening couldn't even repair a set of bowls for more than a day before they fell apart again. Not to say that there might not be a character more powerful in Fates, but I'd find it stretching the limits of believability if someone managed to basically create a perfectly normal child magically even if they had genetic material to start with, given the capabilities of normal mages and sorcerers. And if they did, I'd spend the rest of the series wondering why they weren't creating their own army, or basically solving everything and wiping every battlefield clean through the Power of Awesome Magic. As soon as someone decides that 'magic is the answer to everything, just zap it better (or just add water and drink it down)' and decides a character can do that, then any remaining problems are only there because the character in question is too lazy to fix them. I mean, people in the Fire Emblem series tend to specialize more in shiny offensive magic anyway, so I'd expect the magical equivalent of an atom bomb before I'd expect a perfectly-created human child. Maybe as a DLC, but not as part of the main story.

Surrogates might work, but then I'd expect support conversations and even more complicated class inheritances from the surrogate parents. This could easily be game-breaking, depending on the power levels/available classes, so adoption makes slightly more sense from the logistics side of things (if lazier).

Edited July 3, 2015 by NobodyInWonderland

[Sias]

How about this guys.

Zero/Shara and Kamui marry.

They adopt a/two kid(s). Who look exactly like Kanna (and Eponine), have the same personality, and the same names, but aren't the Kanna (or Eponine) any of the other partners could have given birth to.

Just like Camilla's children wouldn't be the same as Nyx's, but nearly identical. Considering that a single parent change should have a huge impact on a kid's biology, but really doesn't, I don't see how adopting a child that looks exactly like other 20 kids you could have that are nearly identical to each other is any more illogical than what we already have.

There! Problem solved.

In this case, their children get their growths and bases and classes and whatever based on their fathers/mothers.

And Kanna just takes the role of "random manakete kid you found lying around and joins you", just like Nowi, Myrrh and Fa before him/her.

(and, y'know, if you think that's so terribly illogical you can just not marry them. or not do the paralogues if you do marry them. Just saying,)

Yep, that's pretty much what I suggested across my numerous posts here. :)

A lot of text.

The children being (distant) relatives is a nice idea as well, haven't thought about that so far. It could certainly be a fitting explanation for Kanna's existence.

And because Eponine's parents have met with a terrible fate when she was still a baby, uncle Zero happily took care of her...

It does sound a bit out of character for him, but whatever. He has a magical time chamber in the garden to throw her into if she gets too annoying.

Some thoughts about magic.

Explaining the whole child business with magic is indeed the easy way out, so I think that the options not involving random creation of life through mysterious powers are the generally preferred ones.

But considering the possibility of creating humans through magic: As far as I know, this hasn't really worked anywhere in the series, but we already got close to artificial life in the form of

Morphs

Edited July 3, 2015 by Sias

[arkel]

It should really make no difference whether adopting the "biological" children makes sense or not. The point being made is, the game disadvantages the player for wanting a same-sex pairing, which is inherently oppressive and patriarchal. I was so excited when I could finally have my male MU marry another male character so that MU would finally represent me to the fullest extent possible. In a game where you can turn into a dragon and survive being smacked by a huge Faceless' fist, it is so not a problem for Zero and MaMU or Shara and FeMU to be able to adopt their children in-game. It's a f***ing video game for God's sake. Stop treating the LGBT+ community like second class citizens.

[gayserbeam]

It should really make no difference whether adopting the "biological" children makes sense or not. The point being made is, the game disadvantages the player for wanting a same-sex pairing, which is inherently oppressive and patriarchal. I was so excited when I could finally have my male MU marry another male character so that MU would finally represent me to the fullest extent possible. In a game where you can turn into a dragon and survive being smacked by a huge Faceless' fist, it is so not a problem for Zero and MaMU or Shara and FeMU to be able to adopt their children in-game. It's a f***ing video game for God's sake. Stop treating the LGBT+ community like second class citizens.

Everyone keeps saying "be happy that we got anything at all," but honestly it feels insulting. First gay option in Fire Emblem and yet:

-Only one gay gender per path, forcing you to know the character beforehand and choose specifically that path

-Male gay option is a rude, sadistic killer who explicitly pleasures in torturing enemies and is an implied pervert in several supports

-lesbian option is an aloof stalker who curses people without their consent

-choosing either option will lock out the player from recruiting two exclusive characters with their own chapters

-there are gay jokes made at the expense of Foleo, Soleil and Ophelia and none of them are homosexually romanceable

So basically there is gay marriage but it is for creeps and perverts and it means less than straight marriage. Thanks IS

Edited July 4, 2015 by gayserbeam

[arkel]

Everyone keeps saying "be happy that we got anything at all," but honestly it feels insulting. First gay option in Fire Emblem and yet:

-Only one gay gender per path, forcing you to know the character beforehand and choose specifically that path

-Male gay option is a rude, sadistic killer who explicitly pleasures in torturing enemies and is an implied pervert in several supports

-lesbian option is an aloof stalker who curses people without their consent

-choosing either option will lock out the player from recruiting two exclusive characters with their own chapters

-there are gay jokes made at the expense of Foleo, Soleil and Ophelia and none of them are homosexually romanceable

So basically there is gay marriage but it is for creeps and perverts and it means less than straight marriage. Thanks IS

I certainly am not one of the ones saying "be happy that we got anything at all." Everything you have to say to is completely valid (and I already addressed your 4th point); I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm just glad homosexuality finally canonically EXISTS in Fire Emblem. Will future titles need to heavily refine the system? No question about it. But as a gay man I can finally see myself in my Kamui, and that's at least a start.

[exizel]

nintendo received a lot of complaint because of soleil and I heard they will look into it so I guess the best thing to do is to send a message to them with what you think about the homosexual option and what you wish to change. If they don't what the problem is, we will see it again in the next game.

http://en-americas-support.nintendo.com/app/ask

[gayserbeam]

I certainly am not one of the ones saying "be happy that we got anything at all." Everything you have to say to is completely valid (and I already addressed your 4th point); I guess what I'm trying to say is that I'm just glad homosexuality finally canonically EXISTS in Fire Emblem. Will future titles need to heavily refine the system? No question about it. But as a gay man I can finally see myself in my Kamui, and that's at least a start.

Sorry if I made it seem like I was arguing with you; I was just trying to follow up on what you and many others had said. I agree completely, and I realize that now that their proverbial foot is in the proverbial (gay) door, there will be more incentive for them to include it in the future.

[Landmaster]

I'm... not really getting behind all of your argumentation here.

If the biological and the adopted children would be the same, that would be just as true for their determining parent, as long as you don't change the mechanic at some point.

Same parent, same corresponding child, regardless of hetero or homo.

What does change here so that "neither of them" has a canonical parent anyomore, when the one child that you get as soon as the father/mother marries is still completely the same? And why exactly would you "lose a lot"?

And no, the problems of missing Cynthia and Maiden!Lucy are something entirely different.

In case of Maiden!Lucy you still get the child, you just lose a potential S-sup-bonus for Chrom and some classes/caps for Lucina.

For Cynthia, while admittedly you can miss out on an entire character, that's just because you didn't marry her mother to someone (because she has a very limited partner selection and you apparently didn't bother to check out her options before/liked other pairings more).

If Cynthia would have only been existing in a relationship of Sumia with MU/Chrom/Gaius, but not for Henry/Frederick because of whatever reason, then we would have the same scenario.

Sorry if I was being unclear. The biological child and adopted child would not be the same. It would be as was the case in one of the older FE games where missing out on a character's child resulted in a replacement child that, if I understand correctly, was more or less the same, but not as good as the original, overall. By using a replacement child, it doesn't cause problems with the fact that the males have a definite biological child; Eponine in Zero's case.

When I say you "lose a lot", it was mostly story-wise/mechanic-wise in that the child is now adopted and does not have either of her parents being biologically related to them (when one should always be the same per child), as well as, it wouldn't make sense for the adopted child to receive the inheritances from their parents because they aren't related. With a replacement/different child, this can be overlooked. Admittedly, I don't know how they'd handle inheritance in this case, but it just seems to be an easier solution that still results in gay pairings having a child.

Regarding my comment with Sumia, I didn't say it was exactly the same, but it similar in that it is some odd mechanic in that she, for whatever reason, has a very limited partner selection that, sans Avatarsexuals, no other character has, which makes missing her child very easy with no way to get her should you not know this for whatever reason.

[EJ107]

People are massively over-reacting to this.

Not having children from the same gender couples is annoying, but it is not "oppressive", "patriarchal", or any of the other buzz-words people are churning out.

They are also far from the only couples that prevent you from getting certain child characters. For example, if male Kamui marries any first generation female that is not exclusive to him then the player has to miss out on at least one child. I also remember hearing that Gunter does not produce Kanna if paired with female Kamui.

Edited July 4, 2015 by EJ107

[Nidna]

I honestly think that it would be kind of silly if you could adopt the children who were supposed to be your biological children if you chose to do a gay pairing...

Considering the fact that they're supposed to be inheriting skills and whatnot, yeah it sounds pretty silly from a gameplay perspective.

Not having children from the same gender couples is annoying, but it is not "oppressive", "patriarchal", or any of the other buzz-words people are churning out.

It is when tumblr invades your fanbase. Get used to it.

Edited July 4, 2015 by Nidna

[Serra]

Is everyone really arguing logistics and probability?

Honestly if they wanted to be really lazy about it they could just say that there was an unspecified surrogate parent to the child of the homosexual pairing. Or even go ahead and name one. It would be kind of interesting to see how that would work. There's always a character that's MU thirsty enough to volunteer at any rate. (Maybe even the other gay option, if they were unlocked? Zero would father for Shara/FeMui and Shara would mother for Zero/MaMui?)

Or just... y'know, say that one of the many magics in a fantasy universe allowed immaculate conception. (Then you even get a whole religion based on you, win-win for everyone!)

I'm more disappointed from a gameplay perspective, because Azura and Zero would have been neck and neck on who gave the best marriage (kid wise) to a MaMu. Now there's only one option that gives you two babies as a guy, sigh.